Previous Subchapter → 5.2 Rusich and the PMCs
The last main piece of this puzzle is another Rusich Group affiliate, the Russian Imperial Movement, the Russian Imperial Movement is a far-right movement formed in the early 2000s, participating in the Ukraine conflict through its paramilitary, the Russian Imperial Legion, and forming ties with international far-right groups through its paramilitary training centre known as “Partisan”, which it advertises on its VK page.
Partisan offers courses such as “surviving artillery or air attack”, “dive in AK”, “radio communication”, “tactical medicine” and “psychology of combat stress”, and its known that far-right terrorists have participated in these courses, in 2017 2 former members of a Neo-Nazi organisation known as the “Nordic Resistance Movement” were convicted for carrying out several terrorist attacks in Sweden, the prosecution in that case said that a key moment for their radicalisation was their participation in training at the Partisan Centre, and that the explosives that were supplied for the terrorist attacks potentially came from the Centre, when the US State Department later designated the Russian Imperial Movement as a terrorist organisation, (the first time White Supremacists had been designated as terrorists in the US) they cited the Sweden attacks as their reasoning.
And it’s not just these 2 that the Movement has taken interest in, according to the German government members of the German Young Nationalist and Third Path movements have also participated in the Partisan courses, and the Imperial Movement has also pivoted towards the US, attempting to form an international network on par with the National Corps, one of the groups the Movement cultivated in this process was a US Neo-Nazi party called the “Traditionalist Worker Party”, and according to the security consultancy group “CO-Futures”, they’ve also formed connections with the Atomwaffen Division as well.
A report on this topic written by CO-Futures also notes that the Atomwaffen Division has ties with another US Neo-Nazi group known as The Base, noting The Base’s involvement in planned hate crimes and acts of terrorism, the fact that the group has been investigated by the FBI, and that its ideology focuses on igniting a “race war” and causing a societal collapse that will then allow Neo-Nazis to take power.
On top of all that, The Base’s founder, Rinaldo Nazzaro has very intimate ties to Russia, marrying a Russian woman in 2012 and migrating to the country in 2017, in 2019 he was reportedly a guest at a Russian government backed security exhibition, and in 2020 he is said to have appeared on Russian state media as part of its coverage of the 2020 US elections, specifically Nazzaro is reported as living in St Petersburg, the home of the Imperial Movement.
The report claims that it is highly unlikely that Nazzaro would: Migrate to Russia and receive Russian citizenship, move to the same city as the Headquarters of the RIM, and then found The Base, all as a private citizen with no ties to either the RIM or Russian Intelligence Agencies.
Based on this, the report goes even further to claim that the Russian government, or the “Putin regime” as the report calls it, is using groups like The Base as part of its campaign to destabilise the US, by condoning the Russian Imperial Movement and its connections, the Russian State essentially accommodates its organising of Neo Nazi terror in the West.
Now we have to emphasise that this theory is based on speculation, there is no evidence linking the Russian government to The Base, without any sort of smoking gun, this is only a conspiracy theory. The other possible explanation is that the RIM’s courting of the Neo Nazi scene is an independent action on their part, and the Kremlin choses to overlook it; The difference between these 2 theories is essentially a question of what the Kremlin is primarily interested in, the RIM itself, or its affiliates abroad.
But regardless of which theory is true, the RIM’s militant ties are not just theoretical, they’re practical, as we can see from the Partisan Centre’s alumni, and clearly the Russian authorities are either endorsing the Movement or turning a blind eye to its behaviour, because they’ve acted as useful assets to Kremlin, doing its dirty work in regions like Donbas, Central Africa and the Middle East, just like Wagner Group and these other paramilitary units.
The Imperial Movement refers to this as their glorious Crusade against “Hordes of Islamic Barbarians”, adopting the “Counterjihad” rhetoric of various global far-right groups, while the Russian state probably looks at as simple geopolitical power playing, but either way, what we can see here is that far-right and Neo-Nazi groups have built a similar “state within a state” type structure in Russia as what exists in Ukraine, and like with the Ukrainians the Russians have accepted these structures for pragmatic purposes, more bodies to throw at their war efforts.
The Russian state obviously doesn’t believe in ideologies like counter-jihad, after all they are supporting the Syrian government, which is predominantly Muslim, but they allow groups like the RIM to exist and propagate these ideas as long as they focus on fighting Russia’s enemies, whether that’s Ukrainian troops or Syrian rebels.
The result is, just as in Ukraine, these groups have a worrying level of immunity in Russia, and nothing shows this more clearly than the events of the Wagner coup, despite leading a mutiny to topple Russia’s military establishment, Putin let the Wagnerites and their supporters off and even called them patriots and heroes, even while he continues to promote his country’s invasion of Ukraine as a World War 2 style battle against Fascism.
And the way his cronies try to reconcile these things is even more laughable than the denialism offered on behalf of the Ukrainian far-right, with the Russian State Duma’s Defence Chief falsely claiming that groups like Rusich had removed their Nazi tattoos and stopped giving Nazi salutes, even as they blatantly continued to display the marks of the SS and Neo Nazism in their iconography.
And when he received pushback in a conversation with a Russian journalist from the “Fontaka” outlet, he simply declared that these Nazi groups had “already corrected themselves” simply by participating in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even going as far as saying that someone who killed and ate babies could make up for it through military service, we’ll let you decide for yourselves how credible this explanation is.
Let me give you one example. God bless her, with Wagner PMC. Since 2014, a certain organization has been fighting in the Donbass, calling itself ” Rusich “. In its purest form, fans of the Nazis, there are photographs where they zigue against the background of the swastika, they have swastika tattoos. But now they are fighting on the side of Russia. Is the story about these people discrediting?
I would recommend talking about these people with caution. To avoid conflict with yourself.
I do not and cannot have an internal conflict when I talk about people who support fascism / Nazism. My history does not allow me any conflict.
You can’t take it and just like that unsubstantiatedly declare that these people support the Nazis. We have no reason for this.
How is it not? There are a lot of interviews where their founder Alexei Milchakov directly says that he is a Nazi, there are photos where they zigue, there are photos of their swastika tattoos. What more proof is needed?
I think that they have already removed the tattoos and no longer zigue.
That is, even here [in sympathy for Nazism] there is a right to make mistakes and perhaps correct?
If they perform tasks as part of a grouping of Russian troops, then they have already corrected themselves.”
That is, approximately according to the same scheme as with the law banning LGBT propaganda. Ivan Ivanov in his youth killed and ate three babies, but now he is doing well, he is now helping the Motherland. In such a connotation will it be possible?
It can be said differently. We can say that Ivan Ivanov committed a serious offense in the past, but at the cost of his blood or even at the cost of his life he atoned for his guilt: before the Motherland, before society, before the people.
Interview between a journalist from “Fontanka” and the Chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Defence Committee
So here we can see firsthand just how much of a sham the Kremlin’s “Denazification” narrative really, they claim to be invading (sorry, “liberating”) Ukraine to protect the Donbas separatists, but when you look at the history of these separatists, they were collaborators with Neo-Nazis from the beginning.
The Russian denials about this issue are maybe even more laughable than those from Ukraine, at least the Ukrainians try to pretend that their Nazis have some unique, harmless ancient ideology and history, rather than arguing that the Nazis on their team don’t count because they magically “denazified” themselves by joining the Russian cause, without having to change any of their ideas, iconography or allegiances.